The Boys from Gotham
by the stargate time traveller
Summary: Title inspired by "The Boys from Brazil," Amanda Waller's thoughts about the Project: Batman Beyond and the apparent failure and its success. Spoilers for 'Epilogue.'


Disclaimer - I don't own Batman Beyond or Justice League.

A/N - Another author used _The Boys from Brazil _to compare the situation with Terry McGinnis. I've taken it a step further.

* * *

The Boys from Gotham.

Terry McGinnis was gone, and for the first time in the last few decades, Amanda felt, _truly felt, _she was in the presence of the original Batman again. But like she had said to McGinnis _he wasn't Bruce's clone, but his son. _

Amanda walked over to the window so she could look outside at the night sky, wincing as she moved (_why _did old age have to make the body so _stiff?), _and she lost herself in thought while outside she could see the shadows of the guards in the grounds. She shook her head in amusement; these people were meant to be vigilant, and yet they were no match for Batman, and while Terry McGinnis was _not _the Batman Amanda had once known - and fought against - he had the same approach Bruce did.

She watched from the windows as the guards, reacting as though they were wasps whose nest had been poked and prodded by some stupid kid who didn't know any better, ran around looking for the intruder. Amanda knew they would be barging in here; usually, the guards didn't speak to her, but they had access to her although they were ordered to stay away unless of a security break. The only people allowed to come in were government and military officials and her personal doctor who had been checked, double-checked, and triple-checked.

Amanda knew she was a dangerous woman. Granted her knowledge of the Justice League, aliens, and meta-humans was out of date, she was the closest thing they had to an expert. At least that was the theory. In practice, it was because she knew too much. Amanda Waller had been involved in, and the head, and dozens of operations in her time, and she had contacts still out there which gave her the means, if she wanted, to blast open America.

Hence the guards and this _house, _though it was more like a small fortress where she was isolated and didn't have an opportunity to see anyone or go shopping.

Amanda missed the days where she was free.

Over the years, Amanda had come to see the funny side of her incarceration. It was hilarious the US government thought _she _would betray them if she was caught, but they didn't realise she'd had a nifty poison capsule built into a tooth she'd had inserted into her mouth a long time ago; at the first sign of capture or if they pushed her too much she would kill herself although it never went that far during her career.

When she'd first found herself here, she had been insulted that her own government, the people she had worked for, how she had created monsters in order to protect the great nation, would think she would betray them because she knew too much. Now it was a matter of indifference for her.

It was rare for her to receive visitors.

But she had wondered if Terry McGinnis would ever be one of the visitors she'd get before she finally kicked the bucket after living for so long despite modern medical technology designed to hold off things like Alzheimer's among other things.

She had kept an eye on Terry McGinnis his entire life thanks to her contacts, and while the boy had been a troublemaker as a kid - that stint in Juvie because of that thug he'd hung around was a prime example - when he had become Batman after he'd met Bruce Wayne and stumbled upon that nerve gas mess Derek Powers had begun, Amanda had been slowly counting down the days before the boy came to her.

There was no way he wouldn't discover the truth about his paternity. It was only a matter of time, and yet as the years passed Amanda had continued counting. And counted. And nothing.

Until now.

When she had heard Bruce Wayne had suffered something wrong with his increasingly ageing body, Terry had donated the genetic material to clone a kidney. In medical science, the chances of successful cloning were a thousand to one, or something like that - Amanda had had so many medical checkups and operations designed to push her life-expectancy out a little further, it was hard for her to keep track, and Terry had gotten suspicious.

From there he had discovered the truth. Amanda wondered how the confrontation between Terry and Bruce had gone, though she could guess Bruce had stubbornly dug his heels in, giving some lecture about Batman, or something like that.

Bruce was so predictable to those who knew him. He wouldn't admit to anything but Amanda knew even if he told Terry he had done nothing, the hot-headed young idiot wouldn't be listening because it would be exactly like Bruce to lie. Terry had let slip he suspected Bruce had used some of the old CADMUS nanotech to alter his (Terry's) genetic material, and when she had heard that, Amanda had almost laughed.

CADMUS nanotech had been outlawed for _years. _Even if Bruce had gotten hold of some of the stuff, either for one of the insane projects he had studied, he wouldn't have used it. In any case, the Joker had used it on Tim Drake from what Amanda had heard. Bruce would never touch it, nor would he manipulate events for someone like him to be created, he would never go that far.

The fact Terry would even think of Bruce using it was laughable, in a sick way.

Amanda had set the record straight, and now Terry McGinnis was on his way, but what he did now with the knowledge that he'd gotten it wrong by thinking Bruce had tampered with his DNA, though how he'd gotten the idea since Bruce would probably have never done anything like that since to create a Batman, it would take more than genetics, but tragedy.

Bruce Wayne may be obsessive about his chosen lifestyle, but he would never go that far. Losing his parents had nearly shattered his life, and he had personally seen what the loss of family had done to Tim Drake and Dick Grayson. He would never go that far. And even if he did, he would have had problems finding the right people to conduct the procedure. Bruce Wayne had been a businessman - he might have had the contacts, but he would have been hard-pressed to find the McGinnis family or people like them in the past.

Amanda closed her eyes as she thought back while she waited for the guards to come knocking on the door to see if she was either still there or alive, and thought back to those days where she had commenced Project Batman Beyond; now the memories in the bottle had been uncorked, she had to let it all breathe.

It had taken years of work to get it prepared. She had needed to have samples of Bruce's DNA before she could start the real work, and at the same time, she had needed to work covertly to get her Project CADMUS connections ready in preparation for the project. Like she had told Terry, getting the samples was relatively easy given how Bruce frequently left it around town. Amanda was quite disappointed; Batman was known to be exceptionally paranoid for reasons that only made sense in Bruce's mind, and yet he had allowed drops of his blood to be left everywhere. Surely it had occurred to him if anyone really wanted to find out who Batman really was, they need only check the DNA from the drops of blood left everywhere against the people registered in Gotham?

Still, it had only served her purposes.

Once the nanotech solution was prepared the next part proved to be even harder; finding two people who would be the next Batman's parents. Warren and Mary McGinnis's psychological profiles were a match for Thomas and Martha Waynes' and ensuring Warren got an injection with the solution Waller's people had prepared was effortlessly simple even if she had needed to make sure no-one knew of her long term plans.

When Terry McGinnis was born, Bruce Wayne had a son. But genetics was only half the trouble. When you were creating someone like Batman, you needed tragedy. Organising a night out for the McGinnises where they'd watch a movie about a vigilante was easy. A bit of subliminal conditioning and a few tickets, and they were there.

So to was the Phantasm.

Thinking about Andrea Beaumont made Waller sigh and tilt her head downward in shame. She should have known Andrea would not have gone through with it, but she had chosen the Phantasm not only because of her brutal reputation for getting the job done but also because the image of a caped murderer would push Terry down a certain path to becoming the next Batman.

Amanda had never liked the caped look, she had always thought Batman and people like him should have been more hi-tech. Fortunately Terry and Bruce, especially in the latter's later years, had moved on from the look.

But Amanda had everything planned. She had had plans to have the boy taken in and put through a rigorous training program aimed at training marines and soldiers while at the same time having him sent abroad to other countries where he would learn the myriad subjects that had enriched Bruce's own experience.

But no. Phantasm hadn't done the deed.

As a former girlfriend of Bruce Wayne and one of the few people allowed to know who Batman really was, Andrea wouldn't need many clues to work out what was going on that night. _Amanda kicked herself all the time for that, _she should have known about Beaumont's history, why hadn't she done her research?

Amanda recalled the long argument she'd had with Andrea, remembered how the woman had told her what she was doing went against everything Batman - Bruce - had ever stood for. Yes, Andrea had admitted her former boyfriend could be obsessive and driven to achieve his goals, and he might have been manipulative and sometimes cruel, but he would _never allow a child to live as he had lived. _

It had taken years of watching Terry grow up from that eight-year-old into a troubled youth who had gotten himself put in juvie before he even had time to blink. It had also taken her a lot of reflection after she had begun reading the Bible to get some kind of higher understanding, as well as a few other books.

One of the biggest inspirations for Project Batman Beyond actually came from a book, _The Boys from Brazil. _In the novel, a Nazi hunter learnt of a long-term plot where a Nazi scientist working for a larger organisation had come up with a scheme where clones of Adolf Hitler would be grown and raised in a modern setting where they would be raised by a loving mother like Hitler was. At the same time, there would be events which would probably follow the same pattern which had shaped Hitler's life from a failed artist wannabe into a dictator responsible for hundreds and hundreds of deaths and a war which had shaped the future of the world.

Bruce Wayne was no Hitler, but his impact was still profound and everything she had done since she had begun Project Batman Beyond was a more benign mirror image of the novel. Amanda had followed it all up to a point; she had arranged for Bruce's DNA to be used to rewrite Warren's reproductive material into an exact copy, she had almost gotten Warren and Mary killed and had prepared to take the boy in and get him on the path of becoming the next Batman.

She had also begun preparations in ensuring an entire _dynasty_ of Batman-Esque crime fighters appeared. Bruce had been good, but the world at large could have done with a Batman-like character in Britain, or in Japan, China, Canada, France or Germany, and indeed in other countries. Maybe with more Batman-like characters in the world, a lot more good would come about it. Amanda knew the fantasy had gotten out of control, but it was still a plausible move.

Look at what Gotham had been like before Batman. It had been a crime-infested landscape, with hatred and violence taking place on a daily basis while criminals got away with murder because they had corrupt judges and police officers on their payroll.

Two years after Batman had appeared and the crime rate had died down. Yes, criminals like the Joker and Riddler had appeared, but overall Gotham had become better.

For the rest of the world, someone like Batman would do the same job, though it would be on a grander scale. The problem with Bruce's mission was he was only one man, and he had rarely left Gotham to do some good in other parts of the world. While there were many people out there who revered Batman, there were many detractors who, even now, used the fact he was not in other countries where his presence would do a great deal of good to make their point. She had wanted to change that.

She'd had it all prepared. She still had it all prepared, but she had decided against it.

She had decided a long time after Andrea had failed to make Terry an orphan not to play God. She had decided to let things run their course, and they had. It seemed, with or without her interference, Terry McGinnis was destined to become the next Batman.

When she had read _The Boys from Brazil _especially after she had had the argument with Andrea, she realised the Nazi hunter had decided to let the clones of Adolf Hitler grow into their own people. He had no idea what the consequences were going to be - he didn't know if they would become officials, businessmen, or whatever. He was not going to play God and kill them even if they were Hitler's clones, as far as he was concerned, they were innocent and were nothing like their insane predecessor.

He was not going to play God.

And neither was she.


End file.
